Whether it's staying entertained during a long commute or timing your exit from the office for the 30-minute window during which it won't be raining, many of us have become dependent upon apps that allow us to lead a little easier — or better — lives.

That dependency isn't necessarily a bad thing. Instead of coming into the office wet, you can use something like Dark Sky to accurately map local weather. You can use Pocket to save all the great articles and news stories you don't have time for when they pop up instead of forgetting about them, and you can use yet another app to merge learning disciplines in order to create a better, more innovative form of note-taking.

Life is busy and hectic, but below are 14 apps that make our lives a bit easier:

Dark Sky

Dark Sky

A fan favorite, Dark Sky is probably the most accurate source of hyperlocal weather information. With down-to-the-minute forecasts, you'll know exactly when the rain or snow will start or stop, right where you're standing. So if you've got a long bike ride home or want to venture out of the office for lunch, you can plan accordingly.

Kindle

Hulu

iTunes

If you've already got a Hulu subscription or spending $7.99 a month for access to some of your favorite shows and TV streaming doesn't sound too unreasonable to you, you might want to check out the Hulu app to keep you entertained at home or on the go.

Noisli

iTunes

This background noise and color generator app is full of high-quality ambient sounds to help you focus while working or relax before going to sleep. They can also help relieve anxiety or make good companions during your meditation or yoga classes.

Notability

iTunes

This is one of the best things to ever happen to note-taking. The app allows you to annotate PDFs, mark-up photos, record lectures, provide audio feedback, and thanks to the cloud, lets you have unrestricted, uniform access to the notes you take in school or during a business meeting. Plus, your notes automatically link to recordings, so during the playback, you can watch your annotations grow along with the recording.

PeakFinder

iTunes

PeakFinder is an app frequent hikers will particularly enjoy, both for curiosity and navigation. The app functions completely offline and worldwide, and shows the names of all mountains and peaks within view with a 360° panorama display. It includes the names of more than 350,000 peaks, and if you're headed outdoors every weekend, this makes exploration better and easier, as well as safer.

Orderly

Scribd

Scribd

We've got a full review here, but Scribd is a reading subscription service that gives you access to hundreds of thousands of books, audiobooks, news, magazines, and sheet music for $8.99 a month. You can try a free 30-day trial to Scribd.

1password

iTunes

A real life-saver, the 1password app keeps all your passwords protected and easily available in one spot. 1Password remembers all your various passwords for you and keeps them safe and secure behind the one password that only you know.

Pocket and Instapaper

Shown: Instapaper
iTunes

Thanks to frequent notifications, a 24-hour news cycle, and a busy life, it can be easy to catch headlines and stories you might love to read but can't at the moment they appear in your browser or on your phone. These apps will let you save those articles so you can revisit them at a more opportune time, ensuring you might actually get to them eventually.

New York Times Crossword

iTunes

Enjoy the same puzzles printed in the daily New York Times newspaper in their crossword app. This app translates well into mobile devices, so if you're worried about making the switch to digital, this is a good place to start.

Spotify

Spotify

Have access to music no matter where you go. If you get sick of listening to advertisement breaks and want to store offline playlists, you can upgrade to a monthly subscription, starting at $4.99 for students.

Fudget

iTunes

Because a budget can be complex and daunting enough as it is, Fudget aims to bring you simplicity. There aren't a ton of features, but many of us don't really need them.

It's pretty streamlined: You start out by creating an individual budget (as many as you want). You can create monthly or weekly and daily if you want to be granular. There aren't any categories at home in the app already, so any there will be the ones you create. This way, you can better design a budget around how you actually spend money, rather than fitting your spending into settings on the app.

You can also track money and budget for specific tasks (a trip or a new car).

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